


The Cracktastical Western Avenger Adventures

by ObsidianJade



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Crack, Historical Inaccuracy, Human characters as animals, Humor, M/M, what it says on the tin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-25 01:52:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianJade/pseuds/ObsidianJade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the tin.  </p><p>Phil Coulson is the long-suffering Sheriff of Homeland, a nondescript Western town loosely controlled by cattle baron Tony Stark.  Clint is his preferred brand of headache, but Stark is quickly becoming a full-scale migraine when Phil is forced to help him woo the new newspaper 'boy,' Steve Rogers, if he wants to keep the baron's goodwill.  </p><p>Just another day in paradise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. With Tony Stark, Nothing is Ever Simple

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know. I really, truly, honest-to-gods _don't know._
> 
> This story was started way back in April of 2012, written to the three-quarter mark, then abandoned until December, when I dragged it out, reread it, laughed my ass off for half an hour, and decided to work on it a bit more. Five of seven chapters are currently finished; I'm posting the first one in hopes that the reaction will be positive enough to incite me to write the last two.
> 
>  
> 
> DISCLAIMER: All recognizable characters (including those that have been transformed into horses, dogs, et. al.) are property of their respective creators. This is a fanwork. No ownership is intended or implied and no profit is made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING:** This story contains human characters (some of whom are female or characters of color) as animals, specifically horses and dogs. These characters are incorporated into the story in that fashion because many of them would not have fit in the storyline otherwise, and they are characters that I love too much to leave out entirely. 
> 
> This story is purely a work of escapist fiction, and should not be taken as a political or social commentary. It was not done with the intent to harm, offend, or belittle anyone. It was done with the intention of getting the Avengers into chaps and spurs.
> 
> If you feel you will be upset or offended by human characters represented as animals, please make use of your browser's back button now. 
> 
> Thank you for your consideration.

**THE CRACKTASTICAL WESTERN AVENGER ADVENTURES**  
Chapter One: With Tony Stark, Nothing is Ever Simple

Philip Coulson felt the headache start behind his eyes the moment he spotted Stark’s iron-grey stallion hitched to the railing outside his office. It wasn’t often that the cattle baron felt the need to grace the Sheriff with the questionable pleasure of his presence, a fact for which Coulson was eternally grateful.

Sighing deeply, he reined Fury in, swinging down from the saddle and tossing the reins loosely around the post, close enough to the water trough but as far from Stark’s horse as he could conceivably manage. “Behave,” he warned the big-boned bay firmly, then amended it to “Behave well.” 

Fury merely snorted at him in response, flicking an ear and blinking his single eye in what was as close as a horse could manage to affected innocence.

“I mean it. If you damage Stark’s horse, I’ll have to give you back to him to make up for it,” Phil snapped, and Fury shook his head in response, the curb chain on his bit jangling. Phil sighed as well, and strode up the steps to his office with a growing sense of trepidation. Stark’s visits rarely heralded anything good, and never anything simple. 

Much as he’d expected, Stark was behind Coulson’s desk, lounging comfortably in the chair that had been a gift from Coulson’s late wife, his feet propped up on the leather blotter, absently tossing a gold-plated fountain pen from hand to hand.

“So you still have that beast? I keep telling you, I’m more than willing to take him back off your hands,” Tony opened, dragging his feet off the desk as he sat forward. 

Phil allowed himself a ghost of a smile. He’d won Fury off Stark in an ill-advised but ultimately beneficial poker game when the horse was only two. The colt had been the result of a decidedly unintentional assignation between one of Stark’s prized racing stallions and a plough-horse mare, and Stark had despaired of ever breaking him. Hot-tempered, intractable, and combative, the young horse had even lost an eye as a yearling when he picked a fight with a full-grown stallion three times his size.

At the time, it hadn’t been particularly charitable of Tony to foist the troublesome stud off on his town’s new Sheriff, but he’d been.... curious. Coulson had come to Homeland with a reputation for being able to handle just about anything with stone-faced aplomb, including difficult horses.

Curiosity had changed to fascinated annoyance less than a month later, when Coulson had loped onto Stark’s ranch, riding Fury Indian-style, nothing more than a saddle blanket and a hackamore. 

From that day through the eight years following, Stark had taken every opportunity to attempt to bribe, coerce, or beg Coulson to become his stable-master instead of his Sheriff. Purely for the sake of annoying Stark, Coulson always refused.

“I’m still not interested in being your horseman, Stark,” Coulson said steadily, folding his arms across his chest. He was a little afraid that if he left his hands by his sides, in close proximity to his gunbelt, he’d be irresistibly tempted to draw on Stark.

The other man waved a dismissive hand at the suggestion. “No need, no need, I’m here about something else. What do you think of the new newspaper boy?”

Phil blinked. Truth be told, he’d barely taken notice of the new newspaper ‘boy,’ other than to note he was a grown man, with a stature to challenge even the town’s blacksmith, a peculiar, foreign fellow named Thor. 

“I don’t,” he answered levelly, and, mentally resigning himself to Stark’s smugness, retrieved one of the uncomfortable wooden guest chairs from where they rested along the wall. “Why do you ask?”

From the shock on Stark’s face, he might as well have asked if there was a point to alcohol.

“Why?” Stark parroted back, incredulous. “Why?! Philip, my dear man, the new boy is perhaps the most exquisite example of masculinity to grace our little slice of nowhere since I myself arrived here.”

 _‘Never let it be said that Stark believes in false modesty,’_ Phil thought to himself. _‘Or true modesty, for that matter.’_ Aloud, he said only, “I see.”

“Well, clearly you haven’t seen,” Tony chided, wagging a finger at Phil as though he were an obstinate child. “But I believe it’s time to rectify that, don’t you think? After all, a Sheriff should be known to the people he’s protecting.”

Phil closed his eyes, resisting the urge to rub at his throbbing forehead. “What did you have in mind, Mister Stark?” he asked, hoping a breath of formality would make the man rethink whatever madly convoluted plan he’d been turning over in his mind.

Stark blinked at him, contriving to look innocent. The expression was only slightly less convincing on him than it was on Fury. “Nothing strenuous, Phil. You know I would never ask you to put yourself out for my sake.”

Phil refrained from snorting. Barely.

“Just take a ride out to the newspaper office, introduce yourself, and ask the good Steven Rogers how he’s settling in. Homeland is very different from New York, after all.”

Phil waited, snake-patient. That was far too simple to be all. With Tony Stark, nothing was ever that simple.

“And if, while you’re in his company, you happen to mention the fine, upstanding man who can grant him wealth and indulgences beyond his wildest dreams should he be willing to offer me a _chance_ -”

The sigh slipped out before Phil could stop it. “What did you do to the man, Stark?”

“Nothing!!” The denial was so sharp and so automatic that Phil actually almost believed it.

Almost.

“I.... gave him a horse,” Stark muttered, throwing the pen he’d been toying with down on the desktop and scowling at it as though it was personally responsible for his woes.

“A horse?” Phil echoed. “Not a horse like Fury, I hope?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, he can barely ride. And I would never give something like Fury to someone I’m trying to seduce.”

Which was, Phil thought, more of a comfort than it probably should have been.

“I gave him that blue roan mare from my personal herd,” Tony continued. “You know the one; I’ve seen you eyeing it in the paddock every time you’re at the ranch.”

Phil did indeed know the horse; she was a glorious beast, sleek and gorgeous, with a disposition of gold. She was also out of some of the finest bloodlines Stark had ever laid his hands on, which meant she was probably worth enough to buy half the town.

“Stark,” he began patiently, “how long, exactly, had Rogers been in town before you presented him with the horse?”

“Two days,” Tony answered, blinking in confusion. “He came out here with nothing, Phil! The soles were falling off his boots, and he expected to walk everywhere in town! I couldn’t condone that!”

So Stark had meant well. Really, that was not a surprise. Stark’s well-meaning, however, often proved to be overwhelming to anyone not inured to it.

“I’ll speak to him,” Phil sighed, pushing his way out of the chair. As much as he hated bowing to Stark’s notoriously fickle whims, the man’s goodwill was too valuable to lose. He could play a calculated game of dodging the more unpalatable requests - he didn’t want to become Stark’s horse master, because that would mean seeing Stark every day - but it was best to pick his battles.

“You will?!” Stark’s head snapped up, his eyes bright with manic, childlike glee.

“ _Yes_ ,” Phil sighed. “I will do my best to convince Rogers that, while you are insane, it’s a harmless sort of insanity. Mostly.”

“You are a Godsend, Phil,” Tony laughed, darting around the desk to press a sloppy kiss to Phil’s cheek before bolting outside, leaping with exuberance. He took the five steps down from the office to the street at a dead run, startling the napping Fury, who snorted indignantly and cow-kicked as Stark passed, missing the baron’s left buttock by a hair’s width.

“I can still have you gelded,” Tony snapped at Fury, only to have the hoof that had barely missed him a second before leave a neat shoe-print on the rear of his trousers. 

Scrubbing his cheek with the cuff of his sleeve, Phil watched Stark swear and nurse his arse for a moment before sticking his head out the door to address the other man. “Stark, I don’t care if my horse’s testicles threaten your manhood, they’re staying put. Now get out of here before you do something to insult him worse than you already have.”

The face Tony made at him in response was juvenile at best, but the man mounted up easily enough, so Fury clearly hadn’t kicked him that hard. Never one to make a quiet exit, Stark kicked his horse into a gallop through the town’s main street, scattering startled chickens and resigned citizens before him.

“He’s out of his mind,” Phil told Fury, who flicked an ear at him in response. “ _I’m_ out of my mind. I’m working for Stark and talking to my horse.”

Fury’s responding whinny sounded altogether too like derisive amusement for Phil’s comfort.


	2. In Which Clint Appears and Phil's Headache Increases

Several hours after his meeting with Stark, Phil let the reins fall slack on Fury’s neck, allowing the horse to take him back to the office without Phil’s guidance. Even ignoring the influence of Tony Stark, it had been a long day. Phil had been dragged from his bed before dawn to help the local shepherds, Ethan and Julia, chase down their escaped flock. It was a mission made virtually impossible by the dusty-coated sheep electing as a whole to vanish into a small canyon, one unfortunately known for housing a healthy population of coyotes. 

They had, with more difficulty than he cared to admit, collected the sheep and returned them to their pens without loss, but the interrupted sleep had done Phil no favors, and the visit from Stark had done him even fewer.

The meeting with Rogers had gone well, at least as well as one could have expected. Rogers was everything Stark had suggested; a prime example of a man physically, with the exceptional manners and courtesy of a recent transplant from the East. 

Courtesy wasn’t something that tended to last long out here.

Rogers was also, unfortunately, as green as green could be, with the sort of earnest innocence that tended to get men in trouble. He couldn’t lie to save his life, and seemed genuinely bewildered as to why Stark would want anything to do with him.

He had, at the very least, kept the horse. He’d confided to Phil, his tone wondering, that the mare was a finer creature than any he’d ever seen, even finer than the absurdly expensive beasts favored by New York’s wealthy elite.

Phil had assured Rogers to the best of his ability that Stark was simply used to making excessive overtures of friendship (Friendship! Hah!) and that the baron meant well. He’d escaped as gracefully as possible while Rogers was digesting the information, but tidying Stark’s mess had still cost him his entire afternoon, leaving Phil and Fury to navigate the streets back to the office in the encroaching dusk.

The stallion drew up with a snort a block shy of the office, startling the Sheriff out of his musings when the sudden halt pitched him forward in the saddle. Looking up to see what had startled his mount, it took him only seconds to clap eyes on the all-to-recognizable paint horse tethered to the hitching post in front of his office.

Letting his head hang, Phil didn’t try to fight back the groan. This day just kept getting better and better.

__________________________________________________

Stepping into the office, Phil forced himself not to react at the immediate, distinctive twang of a bowstring. Keeping himself relaxed and still, he waited until the arrow that had swept his hat from his head stopped quivering, point embedded in the doorframe behind him.

“One of these days,” he sighed, turning to examine the damage, “you’re going to miss.”

A muted snort from behind him was the only answer. Really, Phil didn’t think it was very likely, either. 

The arrow had gone through the top of his hat, clearing Phil’s scalp by less than two finger’s width, and suspended the hat perfectly horizontally from the doorframe. If it hadn’t been for the fletching, the arrow would have passed through the hat with no more than two neat round holes as evidence. 

Sighing, Phil grasped the butt of the arrow and jerked it carefully from the wall, sliding his hat off the slender wooden shaft. There was no head on the arrow, he noticed curiously; the wood had simply been whittled down to a neat point. 

“If you ever miss, they’re going to hunt you down and hang you for killing me,” he pointed out, turning to fully face his visitor for the first time as he handed the arrow back.

“If I ever hurt you,” Clint Barton answered, grinning as he accepted the arrow, “I’ll deserve to be hung.”

Phil ignored the dizzy quiver in his stomach that the grin always caused, opting instead to pull up the visitor’s chair he’d never bothered to put away and dropping his weight into it with a sigh.

“So,” Barton drawled as he examined the splintered tip of his arrow, and, apparently determining it salvageable, withdrawing a knife from his boot to begin cutting away the damaged wood, “how’s your day been?”

“Long,” came the honest reply, and Barton smirked over the desk at him as he dropped back to sprawl in Phil’s personal chair, just as Stark had only hours before.

The contrast was nearly comical; Stark had been all dark-haired, rumpled elegance in his expensive clothes, an unuttered, friendly threat in his casual shows of power.   Barton, by contrast, was head-to-toe in buckskin leathers only a few shades darker than his burnt-gold hair, wielding lethal weapons with a casual precision that kept them from being anything like the threat they should have been.

Clint had been, for lack of a better term, a ward of the local Natives for the last twenty years, ever since the boy’s father had sold him off to the tribe to finance a week of drinking. 

The tribe, on good terms with the townspeople thanks to Stark’s willingness to trade fairly, had raised the boy, then not more than twelve, far better than his father ever would have. 

He’d repaid their kindness by becoming the best hunter in their history. What he aimed at, he never missed. _‘The eyes of a hawk,’_ the elders had said, and Barton had responded by choosing a horse with a hawk-shaped blotch of brown spread across its white flank, naming the beast Hawkeye. 

“How was Stark this morning?” Clint asked. His eyes were still fixed on the arrow he was whittling down, but Phil could feel Clint’s attention on his skin like a heated brand.

He didn’t bother asking how Clint knew about Stark’s visit; the gold pen was still where Tony had left it, dropped petulantly in the middle of Phil’s desk.

“Frustrating,” Phil answered succinctly, and let himself slouch a little deeper into the chair. “Is this a social call, Barton, of is there a problem out on the Tribe’s lands?”

“Neither, actually,” Barton answered, examining his re-cut arrow with a critical eye before dropping it back in the quiver leaning against Phil’s desk. The knife he kept out, casually digging dirt from beneath his fingernails with the tip. “It’s a news run. I figured you might want to know - the Black Widow is back in town.”

Phil bolted upright in his seat so quickly he nearly pitched onto the floor. “What?!”

Barton didn’t look up from his fingernails. “You heard me.”

“I was hoping I’d _mis_ -heard you,” Phil grimaced, sitting back again and rubbing his forehead.

Every lawman in the West knew the name of the Black Widow. A society daughter from the East, she’d been the prize her husband, Marcus Rushman, had flaunted on his arm. At least until six months after their wedding, when newspapers had exploded with the news that Rushman had been discovered murdered in his bed, his young wife nowhere to be found.

A journal, discovered in her nightstand, had written a clear picture of the abuse she’d endured at his hands up until the night of his death. On that date, her entry had read simply _‘oh! to do as a spider does, and consume my mate! for as of tonight i shall bear the red hourglass of a widow.’_

It hadn’t taken long after that for reports to begin surfacing of a killer-for-hire. 

A hundred lawmen throughout the country had sought to be the one man who defeated the Widow, and those hundred lawmen had been lessons to their successors - the Widow cannot be defeated.

A hundred more had stood aside, helpless to stop her as she eliminated her targets. They were the ones who survived, even if their pride did not. 

It was not the sort of thing that Phil would tolerate happily, but he knew as well as any that the Widow’s targets tended to deserve their fate. Those that willingly put themselves in her way were no better than suicides, but those she agreed to kill almost always had the blood of innocents on their hands.

The Widow had been in Homeland once before, just over eight years ago. She had been the one - on Tony Stark’s orders - to kill the former Sheriff, Obadiah Stane. Coulson had never heard the entire story, but it was widely suspected that Stane had been behind a long series of thefts and murders that had oppressed both the town and Stark himself before Phil had ever arrived. 

“I see,” Phil said softly, knuckles pressing to his lips as he mentally reviewed the criminals in the lands around the town. There was a horse thief he suspected had wounded a young girl a few months before, the usual handful of loose-moraled men who tended to have free hands with other people’s possessions. But try as he might, he couldn’t bring to mind anyone who deserved death for their crimes.

“Do we know who her target is?” 

Barton grimaced, wiping the tip of his knife clean on his sleeve and shoving it back into the sheath in his boot. “Yeah, I do.”

“And?” Phil prompted, after a long moment of silence stretched between them.

Sighing, Barton rubbed a weary hand across his own eyes, looking for all the world as if his head ached as much as Phil’s own.

“It’s Steve Rogers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Don't worry, it will be explained later. 
> 
> 2\. Who spotted the movie reference? :-)


	3. In Which The Plot Thickens (And Becomes As Clear As Mud)

_‘It’s Steve Rogers.'_

For a moment, Phil felt the world spin out from under him, until hard hands landed on his shoulders, callused fingers grasping tightly enough to bruise even through his vest and shirt.

“Woah, woah, easy there,” came Barton’s voice, far closer than it had been, and Phil opened his eyes to find the other man’s nose only inches from his, eyes wide with worry.

“I know they call us white men, but you’re taking it a little too seriously,” Clint murmured, gently pressing Phil’s shoulders back against the slatted wood of the chair before dropping back to sit on his heels. “What’s the problem?”

“Stark. As usual.”

When that only netted him a confused quirk of Barton’s eyebrows, Phil dropped his head into his hands, thumbs massaging his temples as he spoke. “That was the purpose of Stark’s visit this morning; he’s picked Rogers as his latest toy and wanted me to talk to the man.”

“Aah,” Barton sighed. “So if Rogers gets knocked off, Stark’s going to be annoyed.”

“That’s one way of putting it, yes.”

“So, you have a choice of going up against the Widow, or going up against a pissy Stark.”

“Some choice.”

“You’d probably do better against the Widow,” Barton answered, his expression set somewhere vaguely bordering on amusement. Not for the first time, Phil wondered about the other man’s sense of humor.

“But why Rogers?” Phil demanded, lifting his head to stare at Barton and struggling to ignore the swirl of dizziness behind his eyes. “I spoke to him today; unless that man is a far more accomplished liar than I would ever credit him with, there’s no way he’s done enough evil to warrant the Widow’s hand.”

“Damned if I know,” Barton answered, retreating enough to hoist himself up onto Phil’s desk, where he settled himself cross-legged, staring patiently across the space between them. “Maybe he’s got something someone wants.”

“What sort of something, exactly? I’ve met the man - if he came here with more than the clothes on his back, I’d be astounded. Stark said the soles were falling off his shoes when he arrived, and he’s not in much better shape now.”

“Well, there’s one way to find out if he’s got anything worth taking,” Barton answered, swinging himself off the desk in a movement that looked positively boneless. “Let’s take a ride.”

When Phil moved to rise as well, though, the swimming dizziness behind his eyes erupted into fireworks, blanking his sight out in a white haze, and he dropped back into the chair with less grace than he would ever care to admit. 

Barton’s hand, almost painfully tight on his shoulder, grounded him enough for him to fight the dizziness back and focus on the man’s voice.

“....eaten _at all_ today?” 

Try as he might, Phil couldn’t muster the strength for a glare. “No, I have not,” he answered through clenched teeth, and Barton laughed deeply as he untied a pouch from his belt and dropped it in Phil’s lap.

“Eat up, then. I’ll go find you some coffee. And when you’ve gotten your strength back, we’ll go find Rogers and ask him what he’s got that would attract the attention of a lady like the Widow.”  
________________________________________________

It was an hour, the entire pouch of buffalo jerky, half a loaf of bread, and two cups of mud-thick coffee later that a clearly-amused Barton was willing to allow Phil from his office. It wouldn’t have been impossible for Phil to force his way out past the younger man, had it come to that, but Clint had provided a welcome excuse for a necessary respite. 

“Have you scouted out where Rogers is staying, as well? Or were you planning on a merciful miracle simply guiding your way?” Phil asked, with perhaps more sarcasm than was entirely necessary, as Barton jogged down the steps ahead of him, whistling sharply to wake up their horses.

Barton’s responding grin was brilliant in the dull lantern-light. “Phil, you know me better than that,” he laughed, as the familiar sound of galloping hoofbeats echoed down the deserted street. Underscoring the low pounding was a high, clear jingle; the distinctive sound of the fine, silver-plated chains that decorated a certain cattle baron’s tack. 

Phil bit back a resigned sigh, catching Fury’s reins as Tony Stark pulled his mount to an impressive sliding stop less than a horse-length away, scattering them all with kicked-up dirt. 

“You _had_ to invite Stark, didn’t you?” Phil sighed, not bothering to disguise the exasperation in his voice. 

“You think I would have missed this?” Stark replied, his grin verging on manic. “A chance to pry into the deepest, most secretive history of Steven Rogers? I’m disappointed in you, Coulson, you’ve misjudged me terribly.”

Clint grinned, offering Phil a halfway-apologetic shrug. “I sent a kid out to his ranch when I was getting your coffee and asked him to meet us here. Figured he’s got a stake in this too, he might as well come along.”

“Your altruism is noted,” Coulson replied, his voice and expression deliberately flat, and Barton’s grin only widened as the younger man vaulted, bareback, onto his splashy paint. Phil suppressed a pang of envy as he slipped his own foot into his stirrup, hauling himself up into a saddle that felt harder every time he mounted. Thirty-seven wasn’t old, quite, but it wasn’t young either, particularly not for a Sheriff out here.

“All right?” Clint asked him, eyes bright even in the dull light of the lanterns, and Phil sighed in response. 

“Stark, I assume you know where he’s living, so if you’d like to do the honor of leading...?”

Tony’s grin was the only answer before his whoop drove the horses to a gallop, down the empty street and out into the moonlit night.

_______________________________________________________

“I’m beginning to understand why you gave him the horse,” Phil conceded, ten minutes later. The concession was made at a near-shout, to be heard over the steady pounding of their horse’s hooves and the noise of their tack. The three of them had barely slowed from the headlong gallop they had started at, and Stark, leading them, was showing no signs of slowing down.

“It is a bit of a hike,” Barton commented from Phil’s left. He and Hawkeye were keeping pace with Phil and Fury perfectly, the two horses so close together their rider’s knees nearly touched. 

Fury, astonishingly, had done nothing more than flick an ear when Barton and his mount had settled in beside them, something that both pleased and baffled Phil.

“Wait,” Barton called suddenly, the comment addressed forward to Stark, “Rogers is in the old Ross place?”

Startled, Phil glanced around himself. His night vision was nowhere near as good as Barton’s, he knew that, and his work had rarely called him this far out of town. Still, with the location identified, it was easier to make out the half-forgotten landmarks around him, washed silver by the moonlight.

“He needed a place to stay, and I saw no point in leaving it empty,” Stark shouted back, not turning his head. 

A bit absently, Phil wondered if Rogers knew who his landlord actually was.

The property had been sitting vacant for months, ever since Miss Betty had gotten into a fight with her father, Thaddeus, over her intended marriage. The rumors went that Ross had promised his daughter’s hand to a soldier he had once served with, despite Betty’s wishes to the contrary. When the soldier had come calling, she had eloped with her beloved, Bruce Banner, a physician from a neighboring town, despite her father’s anger over his thwarted plans. Ross, a former militia man, had washed his hands of the entire affair by deserting his daughter to her new life and husband, and taking himself back East.

Their small farm - a trim, comfortable place - was technically on Stark’s land, like everything else within the town borders. It probably suited Rogers quite well, if he didn’t mind a bit of extra space. Phil could see it ahead of them now; fences neatly repaired, the big barn closest to the main gate quiet and dark for the night. The blue roan mare that Stark had given Rogers was in the paddock closest to the gates, ears high as she watched them approach.

The three of them galloped through the front gate of the farm without slowing, rousing a disgruntled pack of mismatched mutts that had been dozing in front of the barn, all of whom immediately set to howling.

Ignoring them, Tony spun his horse around the corner of the barn, only to yank the creature to a flailing halt as soon as he was within sight of the house, his sudden string of profanity curdling the air around him. “Barton, if you’ve cost me Roger’s life, I will exact such vengeance on you that your _ancestors_ will suffer!”

“What are you talking about, Stark?” demanded Phil, pulling Fury up and swinging free of his saddle as Clint leapt lightly to the ground beside him. Other than the howling of the dogs, the night around them was undisturbed and the house calm, down to the light shining through the kitchen window. 

“I’m talking about _that_ ,” Stark answered with a dramatic flourish, pointing to a sleek, leggy chestnut standing placidly outside the house’s front door. “That’s the Widow’s horse. We’re too late.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * _Thirty-seven wasn’t old, quite, but it wasn’t young, either_ >> Keep in mind that this story is set in the late 1800s. Life expectancy was about sixty at best, and that's for someone whose day job did not include the risk of gunfights, Tony Stark, and assassins.


	4. In Which Natasha Appears (And I End On A Cliffhanger, Again)

_“We’re too late!”_

As a perfect punctuation to Stark’s words, the front door of the house burst open, silhouetting a towering figure against the bright lantern-light within.

“Bucky! Dugan! Gabe! Morita! Settle down, boys!” called the unmistakeable voice of Steven Rogers. The dogs, obediently falling silent, shuffled their way back to the barn, while, as one, Phil and Clint turned ironic looks on the flabbergasted Stark. The cattle baron, stunned silent for the first time in living memory, was staring at the approaching Rogers in openmouthed disbelief. 

“Steve!” Tony exclaimed, finally finding his voice. “You’re alive!”

“Mister Stark?” Confused but unsurprised, Rogers blinked towards the three of them, squinting faintly in the moonlight. “Sheriff Coulson? And...” He blinked and stared a moment longer at Barton, who grinned broadly in lieu of introducing himself. “Is something the matter?”

“There’s an assassin here to kill you!” Stark squawked, clearly too astounded to censor his thoughts.

“Assassin?” Rogers repeated in bewilderment. “You mean Miss Natasha?”

The gentle quiet of the night was unceremoniously fractured by the sound of Barton slapping his palm to his forehead. “Yeah,” he sighed, dragging the hand down his face, while Phil and Tony stared back and forth between them in confusion. “That’d be her.”

There was a long, confused silence before Rogers sighed, a sound that, if not quite pulled from the depths of his soul, was at from from the tattered soles of his boots. “You’re welcome to put your horses up in the barn. I think the three of you had best come inside.”

____________________________________

The barn was apparently kept in readiness, so it was the work of moments to get Fury, Hawkeye, and Dummy (“Really, Stark? It’s amazing that Fury’s the only one that kicks you,”) comfortably ensconced in stalls, and the three men made their way back to the house. Phil had already extended his hand to knock when Stark pushed past him, barging his way through the door without invitation.

Standing at the stove, his attention on the steaming kettle in his hand, Steve barely glanced up as the three men trooped in. The pretty, delicate-featured redhead sitting at the pine-board table, however, fixed them with a frosty gaze, her hands curling almost defensively around the stoneware mug sitting before her on the table.

“Gentlemen,” the woman - she could be none other than the Black Widow, despite her china-doll beauty - greeted them, her tone blandly cool. 

Barton then proceeded to shock the other men by responding with a grinning “Hey, Tessa. Long time, no see,” and dropping himself casually into the seat next to her.

Something that might have been a hint of amusement cracked the woman’s stony composure. “Clint,” she answered simply. “It has been. Hello, Mister Stark,” she added, inclining her head ever-so-slightly in the baron’s direction.

“Miss... what am I supposed to call you? You have a different name every time I see you, it’s very disconcerting,” Stark answered, dropping into a seat across from her, to the right of the head of the table. Steve’s own cup sat waiting at the head seat, the scent of strong English tea wafting from it. 

Coulson, unwilling to put his back to the door by taking the seat next to Stark, settled himself at the foot of the table at Barton’s left. 

Rogers, for his part, fussed his way around with a pot of tea and cups for his new guests, his polite exasperation not dampening his courtesy. Stark eyeballed his own cup suspiciously when it was handed to him before turning an accusatory glance across the table to the Widow. 

“You haven’t poisoned this, have you?” he demanded, and Clint snickered into his own cup, already half-finished.

The Widow turned her endless-green eyes on Stark, any trace of humor gone. “You saw what I did to Stane. Do I really strike you as the type who would stoop to using poison?”

There was an uncomfortable pause before Stark looked away, coughed nervously, and tugged at his collar. Clint snickered, and Phil exchanged raised eyebrows with Rogers before making a mental note to look into the circumstances of Stane’s death.

“Miss... Widow,” he began, leaning forward enough to catch her attention and calmly refusing the urge to flinch when her eyes snapped to him, “I’m Sheriff Philip Coulson. We’re here because Mister Barton suggested you might have been hired to kill our host,” he explained, nodding towards Rogers, who was shifting uncomfortably at the head of table. 

Raising her cup, the Widow took a delicate sip of her tea, eyeing Phil steadily through dark eyelashes as she drank. Once she’d set the cup down again, she leveled her gaze at him and replied simply, “The contract was to kidnap him, actually.”

Over Stark’s yelped protests and Barton’s low hiss, she added calmly, “I have no intention of following through.”

“You... what?” Stark managed. “You’re not going to kill him? Or kidnap him?”

The Widow’s expression was withering. 

Drawing in a deep breath, Phil set aside his untouched tea and folded his hands on the table. “Miss Widow, what can you tell us about the man who hired you?”

She smiled in response - the expression was, quite frankly, terrifying. “Everything.”

________________________________________

“His name is Emil Blonsky,” she explained, removing a folded sheet of paper from... somewhere Phil refused to guess at. She was wearing a neatly tailored black shirt and a pair of jeans, both of which were too tight to her trim figure to have come from any sort of general supply store. They left much less to the imagination than was probably wise around Tony Stark. Passing the paper to Rogers, she continued. “He contracted me to retrieve information from Rogers on a former friend -”

“Doctor Erskine,” Steve interrupted, his face paling as he scanned down the paper. The Widow nodded, unsurprised. 

“Yes. He wanted the details of the research that Erskine had been involved in.”

“There isn’t -” Steve shook his head, his expression despairing. “The research is gone. The lab burned.”

“For the sake of the rest of us in the room,” Tony broke in, rapping his knuckles impatiently on the table, “would somebody mind explaining what the hell you’re talking about?”

Rogers and Widow exchanged glances, conducted a brief discussion comprised of head tilts and eyebrow raises, and finally Steve sighed, nodded, and began.

“I was very sickly as a child,” he explained, ignoring the incredulity of the other men. “Doctor Erskine was a very brilliant physician and researcher, who was able to cure me through a process he’d developed. There were a lot of other doctors and researchers who wanted the process for themselves - I remember hearing Blonsky’s name as one of them - and they began sending people to steal it.”

“The last attempt ended with Erskine losing his life,” the Widow added, when Rogers ducked his head, rubbing furtively at his eyes. “If I’m not mistaken, it was just after he’d administered his cure to Rogers, who was the first patient to undergo the process. When the lab was destroyed after Erskine’s death, all of the research went with it.”

“So, Steve here is the only link to this Erskine guy’s research,” Clint summarized. He was tipping his chair back on two legs with remarkable balance, staring contemplatively at the ceiling. 

“Correct,” the Widow nodded. “My instructions were to either extract the details of the process from Rogers and silence him, or, barring that, to kidnap him and deliver him to Blonsky for research.”

“Well, since I’m guessing Steve’s not a doctor,” Clint grinned, dropping his chair back onto four legs and pushing back from the table enough to draw the long hunting knife from his belt, “you’d best get on with kidnapping him, hadn’t you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, it's not what it seems. 
> 
> I'm out of town (and mostly without internet) until the 11th, but I will get the next chapter up as soon as I can.


	5. Wherein A Few Things Are Explained (That You Didn't Know Were In Question)

Dawn was just threatening in the Eastern sky when the Black Widow arrived at her destination. Her little chestnut mare picked her way delicately across the rocky ground of the canyon floor, steadier and more practiced than the leggy blue roan mare trailing at the end of lead line behind her.

Shifting her weight in the saddle, Natasha exhaled and drew her mare to a halt without a single touch to the reins. Reaching behind her, she tugged lightly on the rope tying Rogers’ mare to the back of Natasha’s own saddle, urging the other horse closer.

The other mare ambled forward willingly enough, and Natasha quickly untied the rope from the saddle with one hand. With the other, she was looping her reins around her saddle horn - enough slack for her little mare, Pepper, to graze, but not enough to risk her catching a leg in the reins. 

Swinging lightly down from the saddle, Natasha pointed the mare into a comfortably-sized alcove in the canyon wall, where a trickle of water had formed a small but appreciable pool in the sandy soil, ringed in by tough desert grasses. 

“Wait,” Natasha ordered, and Pepper flicked an ear at her in response before settling in for a cautious graze.

Taking the blue roan’s lead more firmly in hand, Natasha glanced back once more to check the mare’s cargo.

Steve Rogers, his forehead bloodied from Natasha’s blow, hands and feet bound, was secured across his horse’s saddle, body limp in unconsciousness. 

“Ready for delivery,” Natasha murmured. Clucking to the horse, she lead the increasingly-reluctant mare away from Pepper, down a short, narrowing track to the end of the canyon. The wall, when she reached it, was five times her own height, with scrubby sagebrush ringing the bottom of the floor. 

Stepping into the gap between two of the bushes, Natasha rapped a light, precise fist against the dusty rock wall, tightening her grip on the rope when Rogers’ mare stepped backwards in protest. 

When a section of the canyon wall swung inward - not rock, but a stuccoed and painted wooden door - the horse snorted, scrambling backwards until Natasha’s firm hand halted her again, drawing the horse forward and coaxing her through the open doorway. 

The door slammed shut again as soon as they entered, and the thunk of a lock-bar dropping echoed off the canyon’s walls.  
_______________________________________________________

“What kept you?” came the irritable demand, before Natasha even had a chance for her eyes to adjust to the change in light. As always, Blonsky was overcompensating, the interior of the cavern he’d claimed lit to noontime brightness with blazing lanterns. 

“There was some resistance,” Natasha answered levelly, ignoring the scornful looks of the half-dozen men scattered throughout the natural foyer, their hands lingering near their guns. “Next time you choose a target, do not send me after someone personally favored by Tony Stark.”

“Stark?” Blonsky snorted, storming around the horse to survey Rogers’ condition. “Stark is nothing but a rich fool. He isn’t any threat.”

“Stark owns this town and everything in it,” Natasha countered, stroking gently along the mare’s neck when the horse stepped away from Blonsky, ears slanting backwards. “Including the Sheriff and one of his men, whom he ordered to protect Rogers.”

“That is hardly my concern,” Blonsky retorted, probing the wound on Rogers’ forehead with rough fingers. “Dammit, Widow, if his memory is addled because of your carelessness -”

“I had to move quickly, before any of them could raise the alarm,” she replied, voice level but eyes hard.

“And then what, you stopped to bury the bodies and give them a full funeral?”

Natasha allowed the faintest of frowns to crease her mouth, knowing it would be invisible to Blonsky, his attention fully set on Rogers. “The bodies lie were they fell. Rogers’ farm is far enough from the town that they won’t be discovered for days.”

“By which point, you’ll be long gone,” Blonsky muttered, reaching over to snatch the rope from her hands.

The mare jerked backwards violently, ears laid flat back against her mane and eyes white-rimmed, yanking the rope from Blonsky’s hand so quickly that he yelped in pain as the rough fibers tore over his skin.

“Shoot that beast!” he snarled, and his guards raised their guns to comply, but Natasha’s snapped _‘No!’_ was sharp enough to make even Blonsky’s hired gunslingers pause.

“The horse is valuable. I want her as part of my payment,” Natasha explained levelly, when Blonsky turned his gaze on her.

“If it is that valuable, it will be your only payment,” he snapped in return, and spun on his heel to march deeper into the caves, his rope-burned hand held to his chest. Two of the guards trailed him, another two stepping forward to flank Natasha as she gathered up the mare’s rope. “Bring it along, then, and ride all the faster when you leave, to escape the hangmen on your heels,” he called back over his shoulder. “Of course, it’s hardly the first time you’ve killed a Sheriff in this town.”

____________________________________________________

High on the dusty ground at the canyon’s lip, a tense hand played over the butt of a loaded pistol, callused fingertips tracing the reassuring curves of the steel.

“Are you sure we can trust her?”

The man at his other side didn’t turn his gaze from the canyon floor, but he knew his eyes were sparkling all the same. 

“Trust?” the other echoed, amusement in every nuance of his voice. “Never heard of it.”

The fingers on the gun slid a little lower, brushing over the cylinder, the trigger. “That’s not reassuring.”

“Wasn’t supposed to be,” came the blithe response, and silence slid over them again as they settled in to wait.

____________________________________________________

The space Blonsky led Natasha and his guards to was an enormous cavern, vast enough that even one of the palatial homes of the Eastern elite would have been dwarfed within. The space was lit with dozens of lanterns, their light magnified and reflected by polished metal mirrors mounted behind each one. 

Turning her gaze upward, Natasha inspected the walls, and, more distantly, the shadow-shrouded ceiling. There had to be a veritable rabbit warren of tunnels spanning out from this cavern, to feed in fresh air if nothing else. She traced a line of smoke rising from one of the lanterns with her eyes, letting it tell her everything it could before she looked forward again.

The huge cavern obviously served many purposes, one of them being living quarters for Blonsky’s hired hands. At the wall to her left, a battered camp-stove was set up over a rock hearth, not far removed from a series of bunk beds made of rough-hewn pine. A bare glance at the accommodations - no privacy, and no luxury - told her that Blonsky’s own living quarters were elsewhere, doubtless in a smaller, more secluded cave that he could claim entirely to himself.

Rough as it was, the left side of the cave almost managed a certain homey domesticity. 

The right side, however, was something straight out of a penny-dreadful novel.

A surgeon’s table sat under the highest concentration of the mirrored lanterns, surrounded by workbenches filled with the tools of the trade. A tray held a collection of gleaming surgeon’s knives, and one table held dozens of precious clear-glass beakers, many full of substances Natasha couldn’t begin to guess at.

Easier to identify were the half-dozen tightly lidded jars occupying a table to themselves, each one filled with half-curdled blood.

Beyond that madman’s playland, tucked into the wall of the cavern, were two jail cells, their sturdy iron-bar doors still new enough to gleam dull black in the light.

Both of the cells were occupied - the left with a young woman, calmly composed, her dark hair combed back in a neat braid that stood in complete defiance to her clear neglect by her captors. Her dress was filthy, having been worn far too long, the threads of the seams and hems beginning to unravel. A few fading bruises marked her face, but she seemed uninjured overall, and her dignity was unshaken.

The cell to the right held a man - small and unassuming, tucked into a tight ball on the corner of his cot as though to make himself even smaller. His state was even more neglected as the woman’s; clothing filthy and tattered, a dark mess of scruff obscuring his jaw, his thick hair in untended disarray, a pair of bent spectacles poking from the breast pocket of his shirt.

At a motion from Blonsky, two of the guards crossed the room to the jail cells, drawing their pistols as they went. One unlocked the man’s cell and motioned him out with the barrel of his gun; the second took his position outside the woman’s cell, leveling his gun at her head with calm precision.

His expression grim, the man unfolded himself from his cot and stepped out of the cell, shoulders tense but clearly unwilling to risk the woman’s safety by disobeying.

“Move him to the table,” Blonsky ordered, gesturing the two guards that had remained with Natasha towards the still-unconscious Rogers. Natasha held the horse carefully still while the two men worked to untie Rogers from the saddle, laying him out on the table with his hands still bound.

“Doctor Banner,” Blonsky said grandly, “meet your new research patient.”


End file.
